While SATA has become the standard for hard drives, most optical drives still use the old ATAPI interface. This has slowly been changing though. According to an article at DigiTimes, SATA could replace ATAPI as early as the second half of 2007.
Although advanced technology attachment packet interface (ATAPI) is the mainstream interface standard for optical disc drives (ODDs) currently, serial ATA (SATA) stands a chance of replacing the former in the second half of 2007, according to sources in Taiwan's ODD manufacturing industry.
SATA has been adopted for several DVD-burner models, such as the Sony AW-Q160S, Asustek DRW-1814BLT and DVD-E616A3T, the sources indicated. Samsung, Pioneer and the Taiwan-based Lite-On IT and BenQ will launch SATA DVD burners this quarter, the sources noted.
We've had an early sample of the Sony AW-Q160S in the 'Labs for a couple weeks now and while it works fairly well with newer motherboards, there are still issues with older chipsets. If you'd like to read more, head on over to DigiTimes.
